


Chocolate on the Fourth of July

by Missy



Category: Adventures of Brisco County Jr.
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-04
Updated: 2010-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-08 17:22:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...Her own life had become part of the larger legend of Brisco County Junior.  But when you were delivered on the dirt floor of a jail cell on Independence Day by your father's 'faithful companion', your life was bound to attract its share of attention."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chocolate on the Fourth of July

"James County!"

The dark-haired girl checking her reflection in the window of Westward's Mercantille jumped reflexively at the sound of her name. A broad smile pasted itself across her face. "Missus Johnson! How do you do?"

The church matron smiled warmly at her, crossing the recently-paved main street of Carla Santa Maria. "Well enough! Now, what are you doing on the street so late in the afternoon?"

"I just finished helping my mother with her matinee," James explained, tucking her fingertips into the loop of the large belt that held up her her pale pink a-line dress. "The first showing of Little Lord Fauntleroy. And I was aiming to visit my father down at the jail," she smiled.

"Did Lord Bowler finally arrest him?"

James smiled wide enough to dimple her cheek. "My father? Missus Johnson…"

"Now, child, you know I'm just funning." She smiled. "Your father is the most honest and decent man in this town, and you've been such a credit to him…"

She scratched bashfully at her neck beneath the brim of her wide-brimmed white hat, guilt turning her ears red.

"…And your mother! The lord knows she wasn't known as the most…MORAL…woman in her time, but that theatre gives the children of Carla Santa Maria something to do on Friday nights that doesn't involve tippling gin and necking in the back seat of a hardtop electric…"

James' lips turned up in a wry smile. "She tries." Missus Johnson meant well, but she didn't need to hear her mother's full history. Likely everything she knew of Dixie Cousin's past came from the dime novels, and those were an exaggerated – albiet slightly so – version of the truth.

"Well, she's a credit to womanhood. In spite of her…" the elderly woman leaned in close and whispered, "suffragetism."

James managed to avoid shaming herself by laughing in front of the elderly woman. "We've had the vote for over a year, Missus Johnson. You can say the word out loud."

Missus Johnson gave James a wry look of her own. "That's something else to be credited to your father. Not many men would put up with a woman who chains herself to the door of the town hall and starts singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic."

James had been no more than fourteen when this happened, so she just shuffled her shoulders. "I come from special stock, ma'am." She favored the older woman with a curtsey. "Please do excuse me, I must be going."

"Good idea, getting in out of the heat. I'll see you at church on Sunday. Oh, and happy birthday, James."

The younger woman's shoulders hunched at the reminder that even her own life had become part of the larger legend of Brisco County Junior. But when you were delivered on the dirt floor of a jail cell on Independence Day by your father's 'faithful companion', your life was bound to attract its share of attention.

***

She learned caution at the knee of her father, and of all of the lessons she'd absorbed in her childhood, this one had served her the best: keep your eyes peeled for trouble. Therefore she took the back alleys of Carla Santa Maria with extra caution, as if she expected the boogie men and demons and Bly Gangs of her childhood fears to materialize and accost her.

James' nerve began to waver as she approached Bobby's Barber Shop. She had travelled the world strapped like a papoose on Comet's saddle as an infant, sailed toy boats in the Siene, eaten a dish of ice cream on the lap of President Rooseveldt, but none of the experiences which had polished her and given her grit could prepare her for the looming prospect of defying her father.

One step, two steps to the door. It swung open on its own and she let out a shriek.

"EFFIE!" she clutched her chest.

Effie Lonetree held out a hand, her buttercup colored gloves gleaming in the gas lamps illuminating the street. "Hush and get in here!"

James glanced over her shoulder. "No one's come by?"

"I've been sitting by this window for so long my thighs feel like they're gonna turn into jelly!" Effie crossed her arms across her chest, as tall and imposing as her father. "Did you bring 'em?"

Effie dug into the front pocket of her dress and pulled out a paper sack of chocolate creams. "Just before the store closed. I got another bag for me so dad won't know where we've been. Why did YOU want candy on such a hot day, anyway?"

"'Cause I knew I'd be starving and sweating to death for a whole three hours waiting for you to finish up." Effie opened the sack, and frowned as she peered in on the contents. "They're already melted!"

"I couldn't help the humidity," James replied.

"My father thinks I'm with you at the Claim."

James pouted thoughtfully. "I hope he doesn't kill you too much on my acount, Eff."

Effie made a scoffing noise. "My father's a big old pussy cat." But there remained a little spark of fear in her eyes hemmed by her white cloche hat.

"Effie?" James gave the younger girl a sly look. "Can I see it?"

Effie smiled, pulling off the hat to reveal a carefully slicked and bobbed head. "Don't ask any of those northern boys the same question. I heard it gets a girl in trouble…"

"EFFIE." James' jaw dropped open. "Why Effie, you look…" She tilted her head. Effie looked like a movie star, something James doubted she would resemble by the end of the night.

Effie self-conciously touched her hair. "Mr. Bob said I looked like Josephine Baker."

James smiled, sitting down in the chair. "If you squint." She took off her hat and sat it down in her lap, then unpinned her hair. Looking into the mirror, her reflection showed a girl with dark eyes and long dark waves that were her most flattering feature and fell in ringlets to the middle of her back. Otherwise, she shared a great number of physical characteristics with her father, and skin that (to her extreme horror) wouldn't take a natural blush or tan, inherited from her mother.

Her other talents lay hidden from sight. She was aces in her math class, behind in composition, and a decent if not particularly attentive student. Socially, she was expected to be a ringleader but found herself somewhat behind the girls who would neck at the public pool and smoke Clovers and drink short beer out of the boys' hip flasks. Next year, she would be packed off north to Smith, where she had already been accepted for the 1922 fall semester, but before that she had a year of senior revelry to get through, and she quite frankly didn't want to 'revel' among her classmates with hair that seemed better suited to a porcelain doll.

If she were truthful with herself, James would say that the real reason she was trying to keep current with fasion and bob her hair was that she was plumb scared that she wouldn't fit in with the girls in that snooty ivy league college.

"Are you sure you wanna do this, James?"

James nodded her head. "It's the best way to stay au current."

"Since when have you cared about au current?"

She heaved out a deep sigh as Mr. Bobby peeked out of the back room. "Are we ready?" Effie's features twisted at his use of the royal we, but James nodded her head. "And you're quite sure you have your father's permission?" James' eyes widened but she covered her sweaty palms and nodded quickly.

"I can vouch for her. I'm the sherrif's daughter."

"Co-sherrif," pointed out James. "Please," she told the barber, "begin."

For a girl who had survived carriage accidents, smallpox and more attempts on her family's life than she could count, the sound of a pair of scissors opening was the most frightening thing she'd ever heard.

***

Brisco wasn't a pacer. He was too fully ruled by his own sense of reason to wear himself out with unnecessary expenditures of energy. But when the clock struck nine and his wife came through the door without his daughter, he started trecking back and forth in front of the grandfather clock in the front hall. He was aware of the fact that the house had filled up with guests and that it was his duty to help Dixie entertain them, but his daughter took presidence.

It was Dixie who tapped him on the shoulder. "You're going to wear a hole in that carpet."

Brisco stopped himself, glanced up at the face of the clock, and then back into his wife's eyes. She wore a black dress of organza and large white dahlia over her right breast, her hair arranged in marcel waves held by a diamond-encrused bobby pin, only wrinkles around her mouth and eyes signifying her (still unknown-by-Brisco) age.

"She should be back by now," he said.

Dixie grinned. "She's the star of the party. Stars like to make a grand entrence, Brisco."

Brisco's expression betrayed his worry as he turned back toward the front window and peered through the lace curtains. "If she's not back by nine thirty I'm riding out after her…"

Dixie petted his arm. "You're getting all worked up for nothing. She's only a little late!"

"What's worse than 'late'?"

Dixie smirked, "When you're a girl there isn't anything worse," she cracked. Brisco refused to acknowledge the humor in the situation, and she stroked his back. "She could be doing something far worse with her time."

"Such as?"

"Such as dating one of the Hutter boys."

Brisco shuddered. "Well, I wouldn't mind if Winchester were courting her…"

"Smith or Colt." Brisco shuddered again as Dixie handed him a glass of punch. "Help me chaperone. Or just keep an eye on your son…"

"MY son?" Brisco scanned the room for his only boy, Brisco the third. To cut down on familial confusion, they called the boy by his middle name, Teddy. He was among the upperclassmen mingling in his sister's party; precisely where, Brisco couldn't say – but that was typical of his son. The child had inherited his father's charm and his mother's rogueishness and, at sixteen, was a ladykiller of the highest order. It was all Brisco could do to keep him in school and from running off to join the military, suffering as he did with wanderlust.

He found the boy standing across the parlor, surrounded by James' classmates, a cup of punch in his hand, laughing exaggeratedly at a joke one of the heavily berouged woman had just made. It took one dissaproving glance from his father to make him stand up straighter. Brisco tugged on Dixie's elbow. "Right now, he's acting like YOUR son."

Dixie smirked. "He's missing a feather."

"We ought to send him to military school," Brisco responded. He downed a mouthful of punch.

"He'd be living the life of riley in two days." Dixie patted Brisco. "We've got a houseful of guests and no birthday girl. I suppose one of us has to entertain them. And they're a little old for quick draw tricks."

"I'll keep an eye on the door."

She smirked. "Keep one on the door, the other on the back porch..." Brisco's eyes were automatically drawn to Dixie's backside as she swayed over to the piano. She still had the same effect on him; he shifted uncomfortably against the windowsill, ignoring the pleasant spike of arousal that sang through his body at the sight of her.

Soon, music poured from the small upright piano in the corner of the room, changing the tempo of conversation: "Anytime", "I'm Just Wild About Harry", "April Showers," and "Ain't We Got Fun?". A few of the kids got up to dance – improvised charlestons, and the newer fad dances like the black bottom. He appreciated their spirit, even if he didn't have the coordination to join in (square dancing and waltzes he could manage just fine, thank you, even with a bullet in his ankle and one in the shoulder) – it gave Brisco time to enjoy the sight of his wife. He saw her in his mind's eye as she was the first time he'd walked into the Horseshoe Club and seen her on stage, coaxing the audience to come whistling to its feet. That coquette had by and large been replaced by a sophisticated chantusse who sang between shows down at the vaudeville theatre turned movie house she'd operated for years and won at a poker game (the only time anyone have ever beaten him at the table, but that was another story). This new Dixie wore a look befitting a woman old enough to have a nearly-grown daughter, but he couldn't help . She caught him looking and winked, the skirt of her modest dress hiking up slightly as she pressed a foot to the pedal, showing….

The front door swung open, and Brisco's anxiety was remembered and forgiven in one swift second. Both girls entered sheepishly, carefully keeping their hats in place as they placed two sacks of chocolate drops on the side table. Brisco whipped around to greet them.

"Where were…never mind, tell me where you were later. Happy birthday." He embraced James fiercely, and acknowledged Effie with a nod. "Aren't you going to take off your hats?"

Effie smirked. "Oh, mister County – everyone knows it's rude for women to take off her hat indoors."

James hissed Effie's name under her breath. It was then that Brisco realized that his daughter was unacountably pale. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

James shook her head. "No, it's just…I…"

Effie sighed and removed her cloche hat. It took Brisco a minute to realize that she'd cut her hair short. "Why Effie, you look great!"

"Thank you, Mister County."

"But I'd try to soften the blow for your father if I were you – you know how he feels about bobbing. He might try to drag you off to a convent school."

Effie scoffed. "The finishing school is bad enough!"

"Well, I'm sure you'll adapt…" He'd tried to talk Bowler out of admitting Effie, but her father remained entirely convinced that cultural seasoning would help Effie land a sophisticated husband. "If you like, you can stay in our stable for awhile…are you sure you're all right, Jamie? You keep turning red and white like a barber poll gone off track…"

***

James turned bright red as she yanked off her own hat. It was like having a mustard plaster ripped from her breast – a quick shock and suddenly her neck was exposed to the cool air. She felt heat creep up her throat, turning her cheeks red as she stared at her shoes.

Time passed with her eyes squeezed shut. At last she cautiously opened one eye and her father was staring at her, his head tilted sideways, curious.

"He took off too much," she said. "I kept saying he was cutting it too short but he said that all of the Parisian models wear it this way."

Brisco said nothing, looking at his daughter as if she were a fascinating alien. "Well.." he said. "It's…original."

Her eyes flared. "I don't want to be _original,_" she declared, with such vehemence that Brisco took a step back.

"That's now how I raised you! And what's wrong with being different?" her father wondered.

"I look like a shaved cat!" She frowned, wrapping her arms about herself.

"Don't be a ninny," Effie took James by the elbow and dragged her up the foyer and into the living room, with Brisco trying to persuade her to stop. "Why everyone's going to be green with envy when they see you!" Effie had faith in their peer group, faith she should have placed in something with a fully-grown sense of reason. All conversation stopped at the sight of them, though the piano music didn't. It provided background music to a wave of confused murmuring, and eventually tittering, which filled the air.

In James' fragile state, that was all it took. She turned heel and ran up the stairs.

"Jamie!" Brisco yelled, though his daughter was beyond hearing. He vaugely heard soft laughter – hiding up the landing were his two younger daughters, Pat and Lou, all of six and three. "Go back to sleep!" he shouted, and both girls ran back to their rooms. A chorus of slaming doors rang in his ears.

"Well, that tears it," _0 for 4 in the fatherhood department,_ he glowered to himself.

Effie watched him quietly. "Were you serious about letting me stay in the stable?"

***

"…Well, that was the end of the party. It broke up around twelve, and then I spent three hours cleaning up after the mess those Hutter boys made. What do you think, Comet?" Brisco asked. The horse made a soft nickering sound. "No, Jamie's still up in her room." A neigh. "Of course, I didn't make fun of her." A nicker. "Hey, don't pass judgement on me – last I checked you didn't have any experience raising..." a snort. "Of course, Big Dipper and Shooting Star count, but they aren't fillies!" Comet pawed the ground. "Oh, never mind." Brisco sighed, giving the horse a little green apple, fresh off the produce cart at the general store, which was greedily consumed. Big Dipper's head peeked over the gate while his owner was distracted, and he tried to nose around in Brisco's pocket for a lump of sugar.

Brisco laughed, pushing the horse's muzzle gently away and distracting him with a handful of grain. "Cut that out. You're getting to be pushier than your father." The horse let out a higher-pitched nay, but Brisco didn't understand what he was saying. As always, his connection with Comet didn't translate into his relationships with any other horse.

After finishing off his chores, Brisco rushed into the kitchen to start breakfast. To his surprise, Dixie was already up and putting together cold cereal for the children.

"Morning," he remarked, pouring himself a cup of coffee. "I know it was my turn this morning, sorry."

"Morning," she stood on her tip-toe to peck his cheek, then leaned back to peer into his eyes. "I know that look, Brisco."

"What look?" He tried to wipe any trace of expression from his face.

"The one that says 'I'm going to try to make my daughter feel better by making her talk about the single most embarressing moment of her life.' It won't help, believe me, I know."

Brisco turned toward the stove and stared out the back window. "Maybe if I try to use reason…"

Dixie snorted as she turned back to the stove. "She's a teenager. Logic flew the coop when we bought Jamie her first compact."

He shuffled his shoulders, slugging down the coffee. "What should we do?"

She smirked. "You're asking me for advice?"

"I've never been a girl," he pointed out.

"Thank heaven for that," Dixie finished stirring the cereal and sighed. "Talk about everything but her hair. The weather, the letter we got from Whip, the new kittens Missus Farner's cat just had – ANYTHING   
but what that butcher did to my baby's hair!"

"Woah, Dix…"

"I can't help it," she said. "Her hair was the only part of her that was all me." She smiled fondly. "She looks so much like you in every other way. But she always had my hair…"

"Dix, that's the first time I've ever heard you brag about being an unnatural blonde."

Dixie smirked. "It didn't matter. I always had the most fun." She leaned into him, pressing Brisco's behind against the countertop, and kissed him.

"Mmf," he kissed her back briefly. "But that's a horse of a different color when she acts like you."

Dixie laughed. "But she's not naieve enough to become a mol fresh out of the monestary."

"Aww, Dix, that's all in the past, and I wasn't a saint myself. She could do worse than being just like you - you're the most loyal, brave woman I've ever…"

She traced the shape of his top lip to silence him. "…Flattery'll get you everywhere…"

"Down south?" he kissed her earlobe.

She shifted, subtly directing his lips down her neck. "Mmmm; south, north, southwest…."

"Last time we tried that my back went out."

"You should let me help you stretch…" Her fingers began to descend the length of his chest and make haste for his fly.

The sound of feet tromping upstairs caused them to change their embrace to a less intimate but no less loving one. A discomfort-filled grunt exited Dixie's lungs, and Brisco knew that she was as dissapointed as he was to have their encounter interrupted. He nipped her shoulder.

"That's for Jalisco," he said.

She squeezed his rump. "Jalisco! That was twenty-five years ago."

"Certain parts of my anatomy never forget, dear."

"Rascal. Nothing that happened in Jailsco was my fault…" She remembered and then smirked. "Oh, that. It was part of the act, Brisco."

His look was incredulous. "Even the part where you climbed into my lap?"

"Mmm hmm. But no one else had such a welcoming…" Her tone of voice changed as the footsteps grew nearer, "…knee."

The tread belonged to James, who wore a turban fashioned out of a scarf on her head and sailor pyjamas. Her eyes were bloodshot and she sniffled occasionally as she gloomily made a bowl of cereal. The dining room was at the rear of the house, and she carried it there, settling down to mope.

"Go talk to her," Dixie suggested to Brisco.

"Doesn't this call out for a woman's touch, Dix?"

Dixie simply pushed Brisco's shoulder. "Git."

James sat at the table in her sailor pajamas, chewing slowly on each and every mouthful of cereal, staring steadily at the same page in a five cent celebrity magazine. Brisco approached her with all of the caution he'd use to treat a wild horse.

"Looks like another nice day out there," he offered. James didn't look either up or down, but straight at her bowl, her chewing more automatic than ever. "Your mother said you could come with her to the Claim and help her run the projector for the afternoon shows. After that, I'll buy you a strawberry Coke at the drugstore – how does that sound?"

"I shan't be hungry," she said.

He watched her in the morning light, straining unde a sense of dignity that was uniquely her own. "I'm not going to let you hide in your room until your hair grows out."

She frowned. "I would have three months until the semester starts. It might turn appealing."

"Your mother and I won't let you do anything so foolish," he sat back down. "I meant what I said – it's very unique hairstyle."

"Yes, one likely to get me mocked from pillar to post in this town." She sighed. "You don't understand, dad, so don't bother to try."

"Oh?"

She gave him a wobbly near-smile. "Everything's so easy for you."

He gave her a dry smirk of his own. "You really think so?"

"I've heard the stories – seen it with my own two eyes. I can't get along as well," she frowned to herself, solidifying her thoughts. "You care about what society thinks, but you don't care what people think about what we do, if our hearts are in the right places. You don't shrink when people tell you you're wrong. But when people look at me the wrong way, I just die inside."

Suddenly Brisco saw his daughter for what she was – a seventeen year old girl who wanted to be popular, who didn't have the glib ease with society that her brother posessed, who wanted to be remembered when she left her little hometown and thought something so simple would bring her into the scope of the legends surrounding her.

"Jamie-girl, you don't need to take to heart what anyone says about you. The only opinion that matters is yours. And I'm not just saying that – I mean it."

She flushed at his praise. "Are you furious with me?"

He frowned, confused, and reached over the table to pat her hand. "No."

"But you didn't want me to bob it…"

"I wanted you to wait until we went to San Francisco for Labor Day," he corrected gently. "Bob's never had to cut a female head of hair in his life, and I didn't want…this to happen. I just never told you. I'm sorry."

She bit her bottom lip. "Feel like a fool," she mumbled. "I wanted to be a Smith girl so much."

"It's not a forever thing," he told her, in a quiet voice. Brisco nudged her playfully. "By the time your hair grows out we'll be able to get it cut properly." Conspiritorially, he added, "more quickly than mine ever did."

"What do you mean?"

"Once, a girl I liked put a piece of gum in my hair at church. I spent all of seventh grade growing out a bald patch."

James giggled. "Dad, you never told me that!"

"Some tales don't make it into the dime novels." He squeezed her hand one more time. "Remember that." Then conspiritorially, he added, "do you have any more of those chocolate drops left?"

Dixie entered the room at that point with cereal for Brisco and more coffee for all of them. He noted her eyes were suspicously moist and he'd have to tease her about evesdropping later. "Your brother and sisters refuse to move! I suppose it's the three of us for breakfast."

"Suits me fine," said James. She smiled, and it was so good to see her smile that Brisco grinned back. "Since you've both been so open to my changing plans…" James dug into the pocket of her robe.

"See? Just like you," Brisco whispered, as his daughter brought forth a flyer and handed it to him. Dixie hovered over his shoulder, reading the scrap of paper eagerly.

"Come to think of it, I don't really feel comfortable at Smith – all of those snooty people and their highfaluting ideas. This is proof that trying to fit in with them just won't work." She smiled brilliantly, with a gleam in her eyes that reminded him too much of his own.

Brisco's expression showed a mixture of pride, disbelief and utter worry. Dixie was grinning. Their unified voices showed their mixed emotions.

"You want to learn how to fly a plane?"


End file.
